Customer Reviews

The Chateaux of the Loire

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have seven books on the Loire Chateaux's. This one became my favourite! It has good texts and glorious photographs of the castles, including magnificent photos of Chambord (but of lesser known castles, also). It is a truly photographic book with panoramic photos! I would say that it is a 16:9 book that offers to the eye the pleasure of the Chateaux of the Loire. I strongly recommend it...

Usually I'm balanced when writing reviews but this book has so many weak points that one star is too much perhaps.
The idea of having very large photos printed on both pages is nice, but they are mixed with 2X2 inches photos (per page!) so there is a lot of space waste. There are plenty of huge page-consuming photos in which there is no castle! Just the riverbank at sunset and maybe some small village in the background! And when it comes to presenting beautiful castles, like Blois, there are only 3 photos (one small, presenting a brick patterns and other 2, totally irrelevant). For Chambord, another marvel, there are 5 photos: 3 of them are from the same angle, just at different times of day, one is at dusk and completely obscured by trees, and another one which I don't remember now. The marvelous staircase or the intricate details of terraces are not to be found. And then there is the text: superficial and completely insufficient.
Look somewhere else for a better presentation of the castles, you will learn nothing from this one.

Very nice book with a very good translation from French ( I'm french myself )
A rich iconography, and a nice layout. Text is written by a well known french historian! This book gives envy to visit one of the richest historical French areas!